This Prom will be broadcast for free at 19:30 BST.

Please note that it will not be possible to have an audience at the Royal Albert Hall for this concert.

Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra kick off this season’s live offering with a specially commissioned work by English composer Hannah Kendall. Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama – its title a quote from American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s iconic matrix of hieroglyphs, symbols and words – launches a voyage across the Atlantic that takes us via Eric Whitacre’s tender Sleep, sung by the BBC Singers, to the expansive, desolate sound-world of Copland’s Quiet City.

For the concert’s climax we plunge into the stormy waters of Beethoven’s revolutionary ‘Eroica’ Symphony, noted by one early reviewer for its ‘strange modulations and violent transitions’ – a passionate musical vision of heroism.

PROGRAMME

Hannah Kendall
Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama 5’
BBC commission: world premiere

Eric Whitacre
Sleep, 6’

Aaron Copland
Quiet City, 10’

Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, ‘Eroica’ 47’

BBC Singers
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo conductor